21/10/2014
By Sven Teske*, 21 October, 2014 (Greenpeace) — Wind power has a pivotal role to play in the world’s energy supply over the next few years. By providing huge amounts of clean, affordable power, it can buy us time in the fight against global warming while revolutions in energy efficiency and solar power gain momentum.
Credit: Karuna Ang/Greenpeace
Greenpeace and the Global Wind Energy Council have just released a two-yearly status report on wind energy and its prospects up to 2050.
In as little as five years’ time wind power could prevent more than a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from being emitted each year by dirty energy. That’s equivalent to Germany’s and Italy’s emissions combined, or Africa’s total CO2 emissions, or those of Japan, or two-thirds of what India pumps out.
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21/10/2014
The city of Detroit must restore access to water for its citizens who remain unable to pay their bills, two United Nations experts urged on 20 October 2014, adding that a failure to do so would be a violation of the most basic human rights of those residents.
Photo: World Bank/Allison Kwesell | Source: UN News Centre
Catarina de Albuquerque, the Special Rapporteur on the human right to water and sanitation, and Leilani Farha, the Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, both expressed concern regarding the “unprecedented scale” of water shut-offs taking place in the United States city of Detroit where, they said, the “most vulnerable and poorest” of the city’s population were being disproportionately affected, including a predominant number of African Americans.*
“It is contrary to human rights to disconnect water from people who simply do not have the means to pay their bills,” said Ms. de Albuquerque in a press release at the end of the experts’ two-day visit to the city.
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20/10/2014
Marrakesh, 14 October 2014 (ECA)* –– Last week, Teodorin Nguema Obiang, the second vice president of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, was ordered by a US court to sell $30 million worth of property, including luxury cars, real estate and his collection of Michael Jackson memorabilia.
**A slave being inspected, from Captain Canot; or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver | Brantz Mayer | Wikimedia Commons
The US believes that Obiang, the son of Equatorial Guinea’s president, obtained the money through the proceeds of corruption.
The case is the first of its kind in the US and could, some observers say, mark a milestone in the fight against African capital flight and illicit financial flows, which cost the continent between $50 and $148 billion per year, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).
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20/10/2014
By Martin Khor*, Geneva, October 2014 — The growing crisis of antibiotic resistance is catching the attention of policy makers, but not at a rate enough to tackle it.
**Antibiotic resistance tests; the bacteria in the culture on the left are sensitive to the antibiotics contained in the white paper discs. The bacteria on the right are resistant to most of the antibiotics. | Author: Dr Graham Beards | Wikimedia Commns.
More diseases are affected by resistance, meaning the bacteria cannot be killed even if different drugs are used on some patients, who then succumb.
We are staring at a future in which antibiotics don’t work, and many of us or our children will not be saved from TB, cholera, deadly forms of dysentery, and germs contracted during surgery.
The World Health Organization discussed a resolution in May at its annual assembly of Health Ministers on antimicrobial resistance, including a global action plan. There have been such resolutions before but little action.
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18/10/2014
In Syria, they witnessed humanity at its worst. Now, through photography, young refugees look at their world with fresh eyes.
Written by Charlie Dunmore, Friday 17 October 2014 (UNHCR)*
Khaled, 17, photographed another young refugee taking a photograph.
More than half of the 3 million people driven into exile by the conflict in Syria are children. Haunted by violence and loss, they have also been deprived of a voice.
At Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, a UNHCR workshop entitled “Do You See What I See” has been giving young refugees the chance to explore their world through photography and share it with others.
Equipped with digital cameras and the boundless energy of youth, they have been producing images that reveal the fears and hopes, loss and longing of their lives in exile.
In this short video, Waleed, 14, and other students in the workshop say what photography means to them. UNHCR/W.Al-Jawahiry
Photojournalist and workshop leader Brendan Bannon says at the heart of the project are stories, conjured from memory or imagination and recorded in pictures and captions. Five of the students share their stories here, providing a glimpse of the world as seen through their eyes.
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18/10/2014
By Helena Meresman* – 17 October, 2014, Greenpeace — Stories of communities taking action for the climate and refusing to accept the plans of polluting fossil fuel companies are happening more and more. Here are just a few inspiring climate acts of courage taken by doctors, villagers, students, farmers, and 92-year old veterans – people just like you.
350.org
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1. Canoes vs. coal
The People of the Pacific refuse to allow themselves to drown, they are fighting back against climate change! Residents of the Pacific islands, among the countries most vulnerable to rising sea levels, are taking the fight to save their homes directly to the fossil fuel industry. Using traditional canoes, 30 Pacific Climate Warriors from 12 Pacific islands paddled into the oncoming path of coal ships in an effort to shut down the world’s biggest coal port for a day.
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18/10/2014
By Philippa Garson, New York, 17 October 2014 (IRIN)* — Africans living in the US from the three Ebola-affected countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, are under enormous pressure trying to help their families and ravaged communities back home. And they face an additional challenge: stigma.
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**Photo: Bobby Digi | In better times – market in Little Liberia selling food items from home | Source: IRIN
For the residents of “Little Liberia”, one of Liberia’s biggest emigrant communities in Staten Island, New York, the path to integration has been strewn with hurdles.
Many of the several thousand residents came decades ago as refugees from the civil war in Liberia. Eking out a living, attaining resident status, integrating with at times unfriendly neighbors and, in recent months, helping those families hard hit by Ebola at home, has been an uphill battle.
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18/10/2014
Santiago, 15 October 2014 (ILO)* — The unfavorable evolution of the economy in Latin America and the Caribbean during the second half of 2014 will not prevent regional urban unemployment from decreasing slightly this year to 6.0% or 6.1%, from the 6.2% recorded in 2013, according to ECLAC and ILO.
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Source: ILO
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) presented a new edition of their joint report The employment situation in Latin America and the Caribbean, which indicates that while a regional rebound in job creation is not foreseen in 2014, a lower rate of labor market participation -which is to say, the proportion of the working-age population inside the labor force, whether employed or unemployed- should enable unemployment to fall.*
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18/10/2014
‘Through Farmer Field Schools, more than 350 farmers have learned about nutrition, modern agricultural techniques and business skills while creating cooperatives and pooling savings.’
Rwandan rural women farmers applaud their accomplishments within the Farmer Field School training. Photo: Stephanie Oula/UN Women
Kigali, Rwanda, October 2014 (UN Women)* – On a sunny Tuesday in the Nyaruguru district of Rwanda’s South Province, 75 women and men gather in their best clothes to graduate from the UN Women-supported Farmer Field School program me.
They are among 350 farmers who have undergone a six-month course to learn modern agricultural techniques for their wheat and Irish potato crops.
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18/10/2014
Amid pronounced increases in global inequality, the United Nations marked the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on 17 October 2014 with calls to accelerate efforts in eliminating poverty in all its forms.
A scavenger picks through garbage in a low-income neighbourhood of Jakarta, Indonesia. World Bank/Farhana Asnap
“Entrenched poverty and prejudice, and vast gulfs between wealth and destitution, can undermine the fabric of societies and lead to instability,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in his message for the Day, which is commemorated annually on 17 October.*
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 